surprise!

back in march we took a road trip with my sister and her boyfriend to visit my parents because my mom was having some health issues. (she's fine now, praise God!) it was a complete surprise to my mom and, boy, did we surprise her. my dad was really cute, too. he's usually terrible at keeping secrets. he just can't stand the excitement and blurts things out or likes to tell others that he knows something they don't. stinker. well, this time, he did a fabulous job of not saying a thing to my mom. every time he called during our drive he would talk to me in a whisper, which, if you know my dad, is almost impossible. anyway, we left really early in the morning and arrived late at night because we didn't want to spend the night anywhere. when we got to my parents' street, i called my mom and asked how she was doing. (she had friends over and was playing mah-jong with them.) i pretended like i was at home and even had lucas say hi to her. while this was going on, everyone filed out of the car and my dad let us in. emma was the first to see my mom and she didn't recognize her because my mom had zero expectation of seeing us. it was so fun! needless to say, she was ecstatic about us visiting and we had a great time seeing her, my dad, and my grandma. here are just a few pictures of our trip. the rest are on my parents' and allan's cameras.

we were spoiled and ate a ton of awesome food that we can't find here in the tri-cities. we had a delicious chinese dinner to celebrate my mom and dad's 35th wedding anniversary, we had dim sum a couple of times, we had authentic shanghai cuisine (yum!), and we also had awesome japanese food. here we are at the japanese restaurant where emma tried sushi for the first time. she loved it!

here's my mom with a fish eyeball that she's about to devour!

we went into oakland's chinatown and i got to see my preschool! yes, i remember it. :)

this is a sad, sad picture. it's a picture of the family room of my childhood home. our old neighbors (who my parents are still friends with) told us that our old house (the house next to theirs) was raided by the police because they were growing marijuana in it. we couldn't believe it. my jaw dropped when we saw this, literally. so SAD. ugh.

water fun!

a cool new water park (think sprinklers, not slides) recently opened up close to our house. they had a grand opening on thursday that we weren't planning on participating in, but in the end we were so glad we did! they had invited a bunch of important people to take part in the grand opening - the mayor, some city of richland peeps, donators, and even big top the clown! the most well-received of these was, of course, big top! he had a loooong line of kids waiting for him to create a balloon animal for them. elise got a butterfly and lucas and emma got swords. he is one talented guy. my cousin had her concession trailer there and gave away free popcorn to everyone, which was also a huge hit! the park is amazing...something like 5,000 square feet of play. wow! and, the best part...it's only minutes away from my house! the kids had a lot of fun even though they weren't dressed for the occasion, and a snapshot of us ended up in our local paper. (check out pages 2 and 6. if you're wondering, the thing on my neck is probably a bug or a piece of food. i checked and there is nothing on my neck anymore. and, elise looks grumpy because she was scared of the guy-in-a-bunny costume that came to visit.) can't wait to go again!

a day in the life of "daddy"

lucas has been dying to visit allan's office for a couple of years now. he is still too young to participate in "bring your child to work day," but allan was able to get us all visitors badges so that the kids could see where he spends a majority of his day. they LOVED roaming through the halls of their daddy's "work," seeing the big conference rooms with the fun drop-down screens and lights, seeing where aunty vicky's office is, where my old office was, and the biggest kick they got out of their visit was the ice machine in the lunchroom. check them out!

deal of the week

once we moved elise into a regular bed, i realized i had to get her a new comforter. i had already picked out a duvet for her (same one as emma, just to make things easier all around), so i just needed a plain-jane comforter. i really didn't care what it looked like since i was going to cover it with a duvet anyway. i had checked several stores (tj maxx, bb&b, target), but for some reason i couldn't find anything under $25 (at the least). so, i went back to target last weekend determined to find a deal. i was in luck because some employees were working on re-shelving one of the aisles of the bedding department. they were getting rid of the old stuff and getting ready to stock the shelves with new inventory. i walked past one of their carts and saw an extra-long twin size comforter for $9. yeah! i picked it up and figured that i could just cut and sew it to fit a normal twin-sized bed. so that is just what i did last night. it didn't take me long. needless to say, i was excited that it worked out in the end and i didn't botch up a brand new, perfectly good comforter. i love it when blogs have tutorials. even though this project doesn't require a tutorial, i thought it would be cool to include some pictures. i am just thankful the idea came to mind.

all pinned and ready to sew........done!

lately happenings

just a quick post to share what we've been up to lately. i'm going to make this quick so that i can go and catch some zzzs before the kids storm our room! (the changing up of sleeping arrangements has caused me and allan some rough nights these last few weeks. and, i know i still haven't posted a pic of the girls' room, but i will soon! it's nothing big, so be warned.) hope you enjoy these pics!

lucas and emma had "crazy hair" day at awana a couple of weeks ago. i have been wanting to shave lucas' head just to see how it would look. i was getting tired of taking him to get his hair cut (which didn't happen very often anyway). so for his crazy hair do, we decided to give him a mohawk. we all thought it looked pretty cool!

last weekend, allan took lucas and emma on a fishing outing. so, elise and i hung out together for the first half of the day. we went shopping, ran a few errands, and then went to home depot to return something. as we were walking out, we saw that they were having a kids workshop weekend! look what our little elise made...so proud of her!

here's what our typical morning of homeschooling looks like. (i took these last wednesday.) see the smile on his face? love this kid!

here is emma doing "school" while i was working with lucas. such a cutie pie!

and last but not least, here is elise doing storytime with all of her little friends. she's pretending to be miss kelly, our local librarian. i thought this was the cutest thing!

moving on to today's happenings...

our friend, aliyah, came over to play today. after storytime at the library and lunch at the park, we came home and this is what the girls wanted to do towards the end of their time together. i thought they would have wanted to play dress up or something! i kept having to tell emma to keep her eyes on the road. several times she almost drove herself and her passenger off of the curb!

our little climber

it is a sad, sad night for me because tonight we moved elise into her own big girl bed. our babiest girl is DONE with her crib! she has been done with it for a while now, but we just haven't had a chance to make the changes. i was also afraid that by switching her into a real bed, her sleep habits would change. from about 4 months old up until about about two months ago, she had slept through the night in her crib, in her own room, all by herself. it was awesome. then, about two months ago, she started climbing out of her crib and opening her door to come out of her room after her naps. it was really cute, but a little dangerous. THEN, just a few weeks ago, she started doing it in the middle of the night! she would climb out, peek out of her door, then run to us and ask to sleep with us. super cute, but definitely not safe. so, with all of the climbing she was doing, it prompted us to take action. tonight, elise said goodbye to her crib while allan and i worked to disassemble the bunk bed in the room lucas and emma were sharing. we moved things around and now emma and elise are sleeping in the same room (our old nursery) and lucas gets his own room back. let's see how things go tonight! i'll post pictures of the new rooms tomorrow...hopefully. for now, here's elise saying adieu to her crib, with me sniffing behind the camera. our baby is all grown up!

craigslist + cool find = big smile!

i have really been into old furniture lately. in fact, i'm really liking some of the cooler mid-century pieces like this one...

...gorgeous! but allan doesn't see eye-to-eye with me on the mc stuff, so none of it will ever likely show up in our house. anyway, a few months ago i was looking for something to store a bunch of the kids' stuff in (art supplies, mainly). i looked to craigslist because i love craigslist and i love finding a great deal, but i couldn't find anything for the longest time. then one day as i was searching it, i landed upon the exact china hutch that i had seen and wanted to buy years ago when allan and i purchased our first house. (we didn't buy it at the time for a variety of reasons, the main one being that it was really expensive, but i really wanted it!) i was soooo excited to see it in my city's CL (not a larger area like seattle or portland), especially since i found out later that the company doesn't make that particular hutch anymore! i don't have a good picture of it, but you can sort of see it behind us in the picture below and behind the banner that i sewed for emma's birthday. (more on emma's birthday soon!) it has a ton of drawers on the bottom and sufficient storage on top, plus i love that it isn't what you normally expect a china hutch to look like. so, before you go out to buy new furniture, check out your local craigslist. you'll never know what you'll come across!

we heart our cousins

my kids LOVE having their cousins, bethany and ethan, over to play. here are some pictures from the last few times they've gotten together -- a short, drop-in visit where they built a pyramid in our entryway, a sleepover where they got zero sleep, and a brunch where they got to sit at their own table. they always have a blast together! the neat thing is that i grew up with beth and ethan's mom (MY cousin) and had many a sleepovers at her house when i was young. i never thought that she and her husband would end up here in the tri-cities, but they've been here for 5 years now! bethany was only five years old when they moved here, and now she's taller than me. whoa. makes me realize that time with my kids will go by faster than i will ever want it to, so i'm cherishing every moment. i also realized that i don't have as much time to blog, so instead of getting rid of my blog i'll probably just write less and post more pictures. that should save me some time, right? we'll see! (did you see the christmas tree in the back of one of the pictures? gives you an idea how long it's been since i last blogged.)

happy 2011!

we just got done playing an awesome game of scrabble with vicky and nate and i thought that i should post something on here to capture this historical moment of 1.1.11 at 1:11 am. we didn't take any pics of our unconventional new year's eve dinner of chinese noodles, cali rolls, and carrot cake for dessert (all home-made from scratch), but take my word for it, the meal was delish and our tummies were in heaven. happy 2011 to you!